#102 Website Success: Pricing Strategies, Google's Latest Feature & Essential Tools

Jonny Ross: 00:00:16

Hello there. Welcome to the website Mastery Podcast, the companion to the 90 day Website Mastery program. This is episode 24. We. That's me and Pascal Finn. Tony Pascal is with us right now. How are you, Pascal? I'm very well. Uh, I was looking forward to talking about websites.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:00:34

And content creation. Fascinating subjects.

Jonny Ross: 00:00:38

We wanted to find a way to continue to share more advice and insights about making your website work harder, and for you to feel proud about your website again. Each episode will comprise of four segments. We have the Usk we answer. We have website stories where we've gone out and found a topical piece of content and we discuss it. We've got the website Engine Room where we offer two apps or software solutions, where you as a website manager or content creator, it's going to help you create a website that you're really proud of. And finally, of course, the call to action everything should always have a call to action and the call to action. We give you one change or adjustment that you could be doing right now on your website to make things that bit better.

Jonny Ross: 00:01:21

We'll start with the first segment and I'll hand it over to Pascal with you ask. We answer.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:01:33

Now, this is fascinating. This question actually came about when I spotted a LinkedIn conversation, actually became a very animated conversation that was started by my good friend Richard Tubb. And it was all to do with him getting a question, actually, from somebody from the IT industry. So we are in a kind of service professional services domain. And this idea of, should I share my fees and prices on my website? The thing is, I'm more that people are going to reach the wrong conclusion by just seeing a price. And this clued me based on price alone, that to them may seem too high. And then this debate, we really kind of became alive. It was a good example of what LinkedIn can do, and we're going to actually repurpose that as an article with some kind of naming all the participants. But that's interesting, you know, because even in the business to consumer world, pricing is tough in terms of deciding which price you're going to go for.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:02:25

But how do you explain, how do you express value and how do you avoid as well this friction? When people get to check out and there's additional prices that we're not aware of. And then of course you've got the business to business because projects are unique. You know, the sometimes is very, very hard to to capture it and then publish it on your website. And then there's of course, the concern that what if the competition was to go around your website, see your prices and try and undercut you? So it's it's very emotionally charged, isn't it, this business of prices on website. But I'm going to turn over to you, Jonny. What say you.

Jonny Ross: 00:03:01

Well, it's emotionally charged on both sides because, um, the, the, the buyer potentially will be making very quick decisions purely based on seeing a number. And the seller is always worried about, you know, is it too high, are they going to go for it? And uh, having worked with, uh, so many business owners like yourself, Pascal, uh, doing those in-person events for so many years with so many delegates all owning, uh, small to medium businesses, every business is worried about their pricing and every business most businesses, sorry, don't price things high enough.

Jonny Ross: 00:03:40

Uh, they're too scared. They don't want to talk about the price. They want to, you know, save that till the last moment. They want they don't want to to show it on the website. And all the buyers interested in, in a lot of cases is the price. You can spend days writing a proposal and send over a 30 page document. And which page do they look for first? Well, all they're interested in is worth the price and so much.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:04:07

Go on. That's all that time I spent on my exact summary and all that time I spent on describing my trading program. Uh, but, you know, I learned thanks to other, you know, sales professionals that, uh, the tactic that I use now, if I get a request very, very quickly, I send what I call an overview proposal. So it takes less time on my part to describe everything we're going to do. The price is there, and we'll explain how we can break it down. Because if I'm going to get a rejection, I'd rather have it if I only spend a couple of hours, not not a couple of days.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:04:37

But if I take you back to to the website and let's begin with B2C. So the stats, the research is out there. You know, the consumers want to know the price, what are they going to buy. And we can talk about physical items primarily, although it could be digital as well. But the number one grumble is that there's always surprises. An additional cost are the checkout time. And people absolutely hate this.

Jonny Ross: 00:05:00

And so that's exactly like the airlines, isn't it? So that's what what they're renowned for. And perhaps buying tickets, um, there's always that additional fee and that you know, so I fully agree. And if you're in the airline industry, I guess you can get away with it because every airline does it. Uh, and so but, but I think from a if you're wanting to get the consumer on your side, then the less hidden stuff there is and the more value you add right from the beginning. So, you know, here is the price and actually it includes everything.

Jonny Ross: 00:05:29

Uh, or you're just very transparent. It's all about transparency. For B2C. You have to be absolutely crystal clear, transparent, making it very, uh, easy to understand and know. No hidden surprises is the best way to win consumers. From a B2B point of view, I don't think. Unfortunately, there's no right or wrong as to whether you should show prices on your website. I think some of it depends on the industry, uh, but I think, uh, giving guides, giving, uh, some understanding of prices really helpful. I think what it does is actually it speeds up the process of finding the right clients, because ultimately, and this is the message that I give to small businesses, is that ultimately the price should be the right price. Forget, forget whether you're going to sell it or not. You need to price something up so that you're making enough money to, to, to, to be profitable. That's what the business is about. And to either buy you the time to have a lifestyle business or buy you profit to be able to pay staff, etc., etc. so the price needs to be the right price.

Jonny Ross: 00:06:27

Don't be shy of the price, have it at have it at the level that it needs to be and then. To use it to sift out the people that aren't going to spend that sort of money, and it actually saves a lot of time. So I think, I think having prices on websites is a good idea. And yes, because on a B2B point of view, a lot of projects are a bit more individual, a bit more unique, a bit more bespoke. You can use things like case studies to demonstrate, you know, you might be wondering, are prices? Well, here's an example that we did this, this and this for this type of industry. This is the results we got. And by the way, this was the sort of spend that they spent with us. And so that is a is one, one way out of many ways of just giving an idea of costs.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:07:09

I like what you're saying, you know, which is there's no right or wrong. You make a decision, you don't feature the prices, but you have to probably then put pressure on yourself in terms of the value statements and more.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:07:19

If you're going to put the prices, they have to be meaningful because ultimately you could argue just a price. You know, a bunch of numbers on the web page. I'm still no further forward as a as a potential buyer to understand the why derive that price. So case it is a lie because they can correlate. I've seen people actually putting packages together. See actually if you're unsure and if you're looking we will have a conversation. But here's an example of, you know, item one, two, three, seven and 12 combined together. This is the bracket that we would be looking at. I've seen examples as well, particularly in the IoT industry where they do a very good job to describe the the structure of the proposal as well. That could be actually very, very interesting. So, so listen, the prices between, you know, X and Z. But actually when when you receive the documentation from us, this is what how we're going to break it down for you. So I think showing just enough of your the how you do what you do, which is a phrase that I use a lot and can be can be very, very helpful.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:08:17

But um, judging by the, um, the reaction on LinkedIn for when my friend Richard mentioned it, it's it's an ongoing debate. So with that in mind, viewers and listeners, please let us know. Um, what is your position? But also, have you seen good example, particularly in B2B but also a B2C of how people go about communicating not just the price, but communicating the value and how they do what they do.

Jonny Ross: 00:08:44

And on that note, we will move to website stories.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:08:56

Now normally with websites, stories. What we do, Johnny? Well, you know what we do. I'm not gonna tell you. What do we do?

Jonny Ross: 00:09:02

This is only episode 24 of the Website Mastery podcast. What do we do, Pascal?

Pascal Fintoni: 00:09:07

So what do we do? We chose an article which was a podcast, a video, sometimes infographics that is in and around the business of running websites. But today is actually very different. This is an announcement. This is an announcement from the team at Google and rolling out on the very latest versions of iPhones, androids and more.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:09:26

They have created and invented design a new way of searching, taking advantage of the touch screen. So I've chosen one article amongst many because the announcement started, I think, mid-January. This one was written by Alister Pott, was a director Product Management for Atom Search Google. It was called five Ways to use circle to search by at least a part. So the question is but what is so called to search? And we were very lucky because in addition to the articles Google released their official adverts and video. I'm going to ask Jonny to play that video for us and for people listening to the audio version only. Apologies. We will come back and describe to you what you will have missed. In the meantime, we'll have a cup of coffee and enjoy the music.

Jonny Ross: 00:10:11

And here's the video.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:11:17

Thank you very much. So what we have now and is rolling out slowly but surely, starting with the latest iterations of smartphones, is designed a of an individual who sees an image. That image has obviously elements within it, in a foreground, middle ground and background. And using your finger and the touch screen, you can circle one particular item within that photography and get such results without having to leave that particular interface. So we can still we can do that to a point right now with long press and that kind of things, we end up having to leave the website or the social network and so on. And here what we have demonstrated by the the video and again, please do go online to to find out the official information. You can circle an item. So the example that was given officially was pics of someone wearing glasses. You can circle just element of the screen where the glasses are and you get such results, products and more. On the research. You can also highlight by essentially scribbling with your finger on top of a monument, which we saw.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:12:20

Get more information you can tap. You can actually take your own photos and then use that to search the web and so on. And what is fascinating to me is we didn't get well. I say, I would say Google didn't get the result they were hoping for with voice search necessarily, although it is part of what we do. But this one feels actually very innovative and disruptive, and I wonder what the impact is on all of us with our almost photography marketing. Because if in future your customers can go any website on mobile phone and see one of your products and what more information are they going to circle it? Are they going to squiggle on it? Are they going to long press there? They're going to be able to do a number of innovative interaction. That actually means with you, we save us a fortune in tech development for ourselves. Journey to begin with, but doing it to prepare for that and change the way we approach photography.

Jonny Ross: 00:13:11

Yeah. So, um, so for people that are listening, I mean, Pascal has explained, but just, you know, very simply, you see someone, you see a great picture of someone and you think, oh, I like those shoes.

Jonny Ross: 00:13:23

I want those shoes. All you need to do is with your finger on an iPhone, on an iPad, whatever. Circle it with your finger. And all of a sudden Google goes and finds those same shoes online and you've got a link to buy them, etc.. So it's very clever, very clever indeed. And this you can interact on any website whatsoever, uh, and, and any picture across the web. So Pascal, what you're I mean, you know, your background is very audio, uh, very visual. Sorry. Um, uh, as a video producer, um, so, um, you know, this, in fact, takes me back to today's when, you know, I'm producing PowerPoint slides and you're like, Johnny, they need to be. They need to look a lot better than that, Johnny. Come on. Uh, so. But other. But what you're suggesting as a visual person, um, that, uh, there's a, there's an opportunity here for, uh, ensuring that we get that interaction with our photographs.

Jonny Ross: 00:14:17

So there's it's it's it's on the table that if we've got really good photography and photography, that's very easy to scribble on or to circle, because there's items in there that people might be interested or might want whether whether it be, uh, not necessarily to even buy, you know, you might squiggle the Eiffel Tower in a picture to then find out more information about the Eiffel Tower, for example. So it's how we need to up our game on photography to grab this opportunity.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:14:47

And I wonder whether. So, listen, this is barely a month or two old as an announcement. You know it's rolling out. So luckily we have time to prepare. But we should learn from the past. You know, we we always get caught out to small businesses sometime because we're so busy. And, you know, is there something in there where in future journey you find yourself actually telling people circle this as an action on the on the website, you know, are we going to get to a position where actually forgive me, the squiggle, uh, would be on us as individuals and they would bring up our LinkedIn profile and, um, maybe we've been a guest on podcast and I can think so.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:15:22

Um, one thing that I'm always very critical of Google, not with regard to tech development, but with examples and the case studies. It's always very, very consumer focused. And maybe they have the data for that. But I always joke that, you know, when you're not listening to the Google I o conference and the US must be the best groomed and nation because it's always about the barber shop or the hairdressers, the example they give and all the restaurants. So but I think, you know, I would uh, if I could invite Google in a humbly to expand use cases to B2B in particular. But I'm excited because that could be literally one of your products that is being circled for additional information, um, you can find yourself maybe at a conference talking Johnnie, and you've brought a picture on screen on all those large screens and said, people, grab your mobile phone, point the camera to the screen, long press, you're going to get more information about this program. Gram that I'm promoting.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:16:19

So, um, I'm excited about it because the more we can get interaction, the longer people are going to stay in and around your content ecosystem. And what wouldn't you take advantage of? The touch screen technology and the fact that for the better part of three decades, someone, someone like Google has been gathering enormous amount of data, and now with AI, the speed at which they can match your search request is just extraordinary.

Jonny Ross: 00:16:47

I can even visualize, uh, having a picture where perhaps this this. Whilst I'm saying out loud, it might sound a bit cheesy, but I think if it's done. Well, uh, you know, you've got an image of someone maybe holding their hands out, holding their hand, their palm flat, something on their palm. And there's a big call to action. Circle this, uh, and you're then taken to whatever it might be, something, you know, intriguing or interesting or actually just find out more about it or or whatever, but I, I can see using, um, uh, signals within the photography to actually create the engagement as well.

Jonny Ross: 00:17:23

So, yeah, there's lots of opportunity there. Uh, and I, uh, anything that's going to increase engagement on a website, well, you know, you're going to start feeling more proud, aren't you?

Pascal Fintoni: 00:17:32

I'll give you a last example. Just come to my listening to you. In the film industry, as you know, big, big fan. I'm involved with the Film Marketing Academy as well. Film posters and you circle elements within the poster to actually get extra teaser content. Nice. Yeah. A bit of a bit of a treasure hunt, which is actually not dissimilar to what you described. If you take the trouble to seek out information using the circle, the squiggle, the long press and the zoom in and that kind of things, you'd be rewarded with with additional content that others will have missed. Like like the Easter eggs.

Jonny Ross: 00:18:05

Yeah, I like that a lot. It's time for the website engine room.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:18:18

Now each episode of the Website Mastery podcast, we surprise each other with a discovery from the interweb and app solution, maybe some hardware that can make life easier as a content creator.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:18:28

So, Jonny, what is your discovery for episode 24?

Jonny Ross: 00:18:32

Typeform. It's been around a while, but they'll still be a lot of people that aren't familiar with it. Typeform is a versatile tool for building beautiful and interactive form surveys and quizzes. It's great for engaging your audience and collecting data in a more conversational way. Uh, it's it's cleverly designed to get you through the form. So the way, the way it works, is that it? You know, you might have, uh, those forms where you've got 20 questions. 30 questions. Well, the way the way Typeform designs it is, is the the usability is, is just a very nice flow that makes you feel like you're not not answering all these questions. And actually you just sort of by sizing it down, answering a couple at a time. Uh, there's lots of, um, others out there. There's lots of competitors, but I quite like Typeform to make things really simple and to give you those interactive forms, surveys and quizzes on your website.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:19:25

Thank you very much. And I need your help because I am a lapsed user. Typeform. You said beautiful. But many, many years ago there were not. So I'm guessing from the description that things are really moved on with Typeform and I should go back to it.

Jonny Ross: 00:19:39

Yeah, I the great thing about it is that you can really bespoke it and uh, um, integrate it very easily into a website and therefore, uh, changing the design. And you've got quite a lot of capability now with Typeform to be able to really bespoke the design on it.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:19:57

Super. Thank you very much. So my selection is actually an oldie but goodie. So it's a product that comes from this platform called similar Web.com. And they have launched. So they have this is a pro version. They've launched a free version for kind of small teams and entrepreneurs call similar sites. Com and as the name indicate is like a search engine function that helps you find similar website to the one you've entered in the search box.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:20:24

Now two examples how you could use that. You've secured, um, a contract. And because you followed the advice from Germany, I didn't write a very long proposal. And they love you and and so on. And you think this is actually a very good customer for it. I wonder if there are others like that in their industry. And so what you can do is similar sites. You can actually enter their URL, the website URL, and be given the list of similar websites. And it's going to be perfect, but that can really save you a lot of time with regard to market research. And then once you have the website, you can then go on LinkedIn, for example, and find the decision makers. So that's one way, the other way, which is more in line with what we're talking about today with websites around content curation. So, you know, I've shared that a lot, you know, as advice, which is to share the news from the industry that you're targeting or, you know, to kind of find a way to be always in the know in terms of changes and development in your industry.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:21:19

And the way to do that is, of course, to follow, um, those in the business of gathering that information, website and social networks. So if you have your go to news website and you feel like it's time for a refresh, if you have your go to, let's say, um, membership organisation, your go to conference, what I would do then is use the URL, put that on similar sitcom and find all the other news website, all the other conferences and and more that you may not know of for, you know, a number of reasons and just add to your bank of resources for content curation and more.

Jonny Ross: 00:21:55

I love how such an old tool that was just seen as sort of a scraper and a data gatherer and sort of, you know, uh, an advertising platform, uh, in a way, um, has has actually come up with something quite ingenious, uh, in terms of being able to speed things up in finding some really great content and, uh, and similarity.

Jonny Ross: 00:22:20

So, yeah, it's an old one, but it is a good one.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:22:24

It is a good one. Uh, very quickly although similar sites.com is the one I'm kind of pushing today. If you are a full time kind of content marketer and SEO practitioner, the pro version is probably worth you looking into very, very quickly. They have this incredible, um, dashboard for referring sites, which is kind of very, very cool as well. So to know about yours to begin with. But also, you know, let's be frank, the competition and more knowing where they're getting the referring traffic from can give you some ideas for your next tactic.

Jonny Ross: 00:22:56

And that's going to help you with your link building strategy. And on that note, we will move to the website call to action.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:23:11

This is about the one change to one adjustment that you should be making right now to make your website work harder for you, and for you to feel prouder of your website. So, Johnny, what is your call to action?

Jonny Ross: 00:23:21

So we are looking for more clients.

Jonny Ross: 00:23:24

We're looking for more customers. One of the ways to do that is to get more people to your website, to get them to spend longer on your website. So how can we increase our search engine optimization? How can we increase our engagement, time and engagement? Well, my simple call to action for this episode is related content. So think about content that is related to the content that's on that particular page, whether it be related product, whether it be related services, whether it be related blog content, podcast content, uh user guides, uh technical information, what related content have you got and how can you start showing those related articles, related products, related, uh, items on the different pages that you've got. So if I go on to one of your, um, white papers, uh, it shows me some related blog content content. It shows me some related services, related products, and likewise spinning it completely around. When I'm on a service page, I want to see the related resources and articles that are available.

Jonny Ross: 00:24:28

And that's a great way to keep users engaged. But it's also a great way to build trust, to show users that you, uh, that you have a lot more depth of products or services or content around the thing that they're interested in. So it's related content. Nice, easy, quick call to action.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:24:45

It's nice and easy. And actually what is lovely about this, it's a lovely exercise to do because it makes you reconnect with your content as well. And you see the correlations. This one is some lovely example. Sometime it's very much like you would expect, which is at the bottom of the article. Um, you know, you might find this interesting, but sometimes people go further and they create a companion article saying on the subject of in case of missed them, here's a, here's our kind of top list of, you know, and I can think so you can really make it quite conversational in nature as well as as well as practical.

Jonny Ross: 00:25:18

What is your website call to action?

Pascal Fintoni: 00:25:21

I listen, this one is is one that I'm wrestling with at the moment for my own business.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:25:26

So when was the last time you checked and challenged the design of your contact Us page? I get it, you know, you've put all the effort on the homepage, whether the effort in the products and services, you're blogging away because Johnny told you so and you're doing all that wonderful things. And because I think psychology, because it's the last bit on the on the, on the menu options on the far right, you know, people forget it, but very often it's neglected because it certainly doesn't really follow the style, the tone of voice, the design elements, just one or nothing. This being almost your farewell moment, it could be, you know, for the living, for some of you leaving the website because you can move on to something else, then what I would do is research and bookmark examples from other sectors. I mean, really other sectors don't look at the competition you're going to end up plagiarizing, or it's the same as everybody else anyway, and almost quite like a scrap booking of those contacts pages and use them for inspiration.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:26:20

Put together a bit of a brief bit of a kind of schematics and talk to your design agency. But I think it's important to make the contacts page just as, um, enjoyable to to get to. Then the home page.

Jonny Ross: 00:26:33

Well, it's one of the most visited pages on most websites, and there is your absolute opportunity to stand out, to be a bit unique and to make people absolutely want to pick up that phone or click that email, or fill out that form wherever it might be, there is your opportunity. So I love the idea of because the contact page is never thought about. It's like, you know, well, we just want our name and address on there. And then the designer just designed something that's similar to the website and there we go. It's done. No one ever thinks about what's on the contact page. So I, I love that you're telling us to reflect. And there's your opportunity to make a big difference and, uh, and create some engagement, which I think in on reflection, this episode has been all about that because not only have we talked about Google's late latest feature in terms of, uh, circling and scribbling, which increases that engagement on the website with a lot of the tools and call to actions we've given you today have been around creating engagement, creating time on the website and the pricing strategy.

Jonny Ross: 00:27:34

Well, that's, you know, what we're what we're saying there is we're talking about how to increase user experience, how to, uh, increase, um, getting across the value that you add and really, you know, cutting through quite quickly in terms of is this a good match? Is this customer, this client is this supplier, is this is this company the right match. And and really sort of helping that process along and not giving the, the, the, the hidden extras at the end, but also giving them some kind of price as some kind of guide. So I think on reflection it's about engagement and it's about being transparent.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:28:15

Yeah. And if you can sense a hint of surprise and Johnny's voice is because I'm surprised too, because we don't confer, we don't communicate, we kind of research in a separately, we add our findings into the show notes, and then it kind of comes together so people could accuse us of doing what we're talking about. You know.

Jonny Ross: 00:28:33

They certainly could.

Jonny Ross: 00:28:36

This is this is the sort of stuff that we just love on a daily basis. And, and even better, when moments like this happened and we realized that everything we've just talked about is ticking, you know, 1 or 2 very important boxes. And all we're after is for you to start feeling proud of your website again. And that's it for today. This was episode 24 of our new podcast series, The Audio companion to the 98 Website Mastery Program. For more information, please visit 90 Day Marketing mastery.com and you'll be able to book your discovery call with even myself or Pascal. We'll be back with another episode. In the meantime, feel free to send your questions, share your preferred apps and links to your website. Once you've made the changes we've spoken about, because we'd love to give you a shout out. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening. We've been live. We're also on the podcast. You might be listening afterwards, which is great. Maybe you're watching afterwards on YouTube. Tell your friends is what I'm trying to say.

Jonny Ross: 00:29:29

Tell your friends if this has been helpful. If it's added value and give us feedback, add comments, subscribe. Share some of the love. Because this stuff we are passionate about and we want to help you feel proud of your website. Pascal. It was lovely seeing you enjoy the weekend and for now I will leave you all with a fun video montage to go whilst you reflect and think about what little bite sized things you're going to do on your website in the next few days to start feeling proud. We'll see you soon. Take care.